In the first post of this series, we got to know all about ‘Formula Column‘ – the various formula types we support, how/where to use them etc. In this post, let’s see another little-explored feature of Zoho Reports – Colors.

As you know, Zoho Reports allows you to easily create various types of reports like charts, pivot tables, summary tables, dashboards etc. Charts are particularly liked by many due to their visual appeal and the easy manner in which they get to convey trends and to interpret or segregate large amounts of data. When it comes to charts, color is an important aspect as it helps differentiate one metric/measure from another. There are two different aspects of color when it comes to Zoho Reports. Let’s illustrate them here with examples.
Using the Color Palette

Let’s say you want to plot monthly sales and profit numbers. Drag-and-drop ‘Month’ in the X-axis and ‘Sales’ & ‘Profit’ as the two Y-axes.

Default colors for ‘Sales’ and ‘Profit’ are assigned by Zoho Reports. Go to the design mode by clicking on the Edit Design button. Click on the legend (‘Total Sales’ or ‘Total Profit’) and you’ll get to see the color palette.

Choose the colors you want.

Using the Colors Shelf (Field)Let’s say you want to plot monthly sales. But you would need to know how different regions contributed to sales. For this, you will be dropping ‘Date’ in the X-axis and ‘Sales’ in the Y-axis. And to plot the sales region-wise, you can drop ‘Region’ in the Color field.

Hope it was simple and easy. Work with Colors in Zoho Reports and do let us know how it goes.